[Editor’s note: We are very happy to welcome Stuart Patterson back to Toronto Pursuits. His seminar promises to be a literary and visual feast of the richness of Florence from the 14th through the 16th centuries. In true Renaissance spirit, it brings together works by four thinkers whose interests and […]
By Becca Fisher [Editor’s note: Becca will be leading Eye of the Beholder, a Toronto Pursuits seminar on Lawrence Durrell’s much-loved tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet. She is Director of Continuing Education at our partner Harrison Middleton University and a longtime member and discussion leader in the Great Books community. We […]
[Editor’s note: We are thrilled to have Rosemary Gould return to Toronto Pursuits. Whether you are a longtime reader of these poets or want to read and discuss more poetry but are not sure how to jump in, this seminar is for you. Rosemary wants to approach the poems in […]
Nella Cotrupi is a lawyer and educator whose work has focused on the social and ethical engagements of literature. She has led many seminars at Toronto Pursuits and Travel Pursuits to Sicily and Trieste/Croatia. This July, she is leading Migration and Metamorphosis in Nabokov’s Pnin and Hill’s The Book of […]
Zoë comes to us from Chicago and is greatly looking forward to coming to Toronto for the first time to lead the discussion of Sophocles’ Theban plays in her seminar The Fall of the House of Oedipus. The three plays trace the fall of a great king and the subsequent […]
A guest blog post by Jonathan Rowan She waited for him in the garden . . . drawing on a pair of singularly fresh soft and elastic light gloves and presenting herself with a superficial readiness which, as he approached her over the small smooth lawn and in the […]
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. – T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” What is the nature of art and the artist? Is art to be […]
“Beauty comes to us, with no work of our own; then leaves us prepared to undergo a giant labour.” — Elaine Scarry As a young art student in the early 1970s, I acquired as my first reproduction to adorn the wall of my apartment White Plumes by Henri Matisse. A […]
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. from “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Look […]
“Who are you?” – the Caterpillar, Alice in Wonderland “And you may ask yourself, Am I right? Or am I wrong? And you may say to yourself, My God! What have I done?!” – Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime” When most people think of the story of Oedipus, they […]